


they just don't get it

by jestbee



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression, Introspection, M/M, humour as a defense mechanism, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 00:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17274092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: Dan sometimes jokes about things that aren't a joke





	they just don't get it

**Author's Note:**

> Written from a prompt on Tumblr

Her eyebrows crease in a center when she's concerned. He knows this because it's often a look she gets these days, at the drop of a hat it seems, but he doesn't often know what he's done that's so concerning. Except now, because this time he hasn't done anything at all. 

"I'm joking," he says, sick of having to say it after every joke he makes, but he's found if he doesn't she's liable to adopt this exact expression and look at him like he needs help. 

"Are you sure?" 

She's not a bad person, it's exactly the opposite. She cares about him, she's concerned, but sometimes the cloying suffocation of her concern is too much. He's joking, always joking, if he's honest with himself there isn't much he takes seriously these days. 

"Yes," he says. 

"It doesn't sound like something you should joke about," she says. "You joke about a lot of things you shouldn't." 

It's the beginning of the end, he thinks. Months before he'll tell the exact same joke to Phil on a Skype call and watch him laugh. 

"Do you ever think I joke about things I shouldn't?" he says, because if Phil understands his sense of humour, then it's okay to ask him whether he goes too far sometimes. 

Phil gets a pensive look. His eyebrows have creased a little bit too but it isn't concern, it's something else entirely. Dan doesn't mind it. 

"I think that sometimes you joke about things… that aren't a joke."

"What do you mean?" 

Phil shakes his head. "I don't know. I guess it's fine to joke about things you don't want to talk about. Like, talk talk. It's a good way to… introduce a topic. Test the waters." 

"Phil," Dan says, "Sometimes I joke about wanting to die." 

"Yeah," Phil says, his voice a little sombre, like he knows about the times when Dan's head feels heavy, the world a bit faded, when he can't get out of bed. The days he doesn't share with anyone. The ones he comes back from with a joke about too much Halo and not enough motivation. "You also joke about liking boys." 

Dan looks away from the screen because regardless of whether it's through a webcam or in person, Dan can't meet Phil's eyes when he's calling him out on things like that. 

"It's okay," Phil says, when Dan doesn't respond. "It's okay to joke." 

Later, much much later, he'll using joking as an excuse for many things. For all the time he can't explain the pain in his head sincerely, for the moments he needs to take something back, explain it away. 

"Why don't they... " Dan's hand is in his hair and the other is scrolling through Twitter. Phil is next to him on the couch, a warm comforting presence when Dan's frustrations are loud and echoing in his own brain. "Why don't they get it?" 

Phil reaches over and stills his scrolling hand, preventing him for reading any more disapproval. He jokes too much about death, he lies, he is all manner of deceitful and shameful things hidden behind a joke if the internet is to be believed. 

"Dan." 

"But why, Phil? You get it. It's just… It's just my sense of humour. Why don't they get that? Why do they think I'm…" 

Phil tugs the laptop away and sets it on the floor. He pulls Dan to him under Dan folds in, sinking his head down onto Phil's chest. He fits here, like he always does, cradled against him in the bad times and the good. Phil runs a hand through his fringe and Dan feels it like a soothing balm on his actual mind. 

"It's okay to joke about things," Phil says. "But at some point I think you have to ask yourself if there's something more behind it." 

Dan stays silent. Phil's fingers repeat their path through his hair and Dan doesn't have a joke or a comeback to anything Phil is saying.

"It's okay to have a dark sense of humour, I get it." 

And he does, he gets it. Phil is the only one who has always appreciated every facet of his humour like it's an old record he was already familiar with long before they met. Like he could somehow tune in to Dan's frequency. The rest of the world is much less accepting. 

"But?" Dan says, sensing it's there. 

"But maybe… sometimes you joke about things that aren't a joke."

That echos somewhere in his head, a faint memory of his saying that before.

"I joke about wanting to die," Dan says, as if by rote. 

"Yeah." 

And this time Phil doesn't follow it up with a joke of his own. Instead, he holds Dan tight while he works through it. Until his face is hot and his ears are ringing. Until he's so drained and tired that he drifts in to sleep right there on Phil's lap. 

Eventually, he'll talk to his therapist about it. Humour as a defense mechanism, a way to address his issues without ever needing to take accountability for them. How it's fine to objectify an illness he doesn't want to be defined by, but that he can't get angry if other people don't understand that's what he's doing. 

How humour will only take you so far. 

That's the hardest thing to remember. When he's frustrated to the point of tears, wondering why everyone can't just get it already. 

"Why don't they get it?" he says, over and over, like a broken record, the one Phil's known for so long stuck on the same track. Skipping and skipping, until he's sick of saying it as much as Phil is sick of hearing it. 

"Sometimes you joke about things that aren't a joke," Phil says, again. Like he's own melody played out over so many years. 

"I joke about wanting to die," Dan says, rolling his eyes. "I don't want to actually die." 

"You also joke about liking boys," Phil says. 

He doesn't break eye contact as he says it, and Dan flashes back to being eighteen and scared and avoiding this very thing. Running from it and hiding behind the jokes. He isn't sure he's changed much. 

"I do," Dan nods. 

"Do you think it's time to stop joking?" Phil says. 

Dan feels that in the center of his chest, what an undertaking like that might mean. He feels his own brows crease in concern for what it might mean if he does finally stop joking, starting talking. Talk talking. 

He doesn't even know where to start, how he leaves the jokes and moves on to the next bit. Slowly, he thinks, so slowly he doesn't notice, until they finally get it. 

"Yeah," he says. "It's time."


End file.
